Living History
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s living history is basically the story of her eight years in the White House as First Lady and the many accusations from right-wing Republicans she and her husband had to face.
After graduating from Wellesley College, Hillary studied law at Yale where she first met Bill Clinton in 1971. They went together for four years before she accepted his marriage proposal. They were married in Arkansas, and soon Bill Clinton was elected Attorney General there. Later he became the Governor of Arkansas, before running for President.
But as soon as they were settled in the White House, they were plagued by the Whitewater investigation, which was based on a real estate investment they had made in Arkansas many years before. To Hillary, it was being used as a "weapon for political destruction." They had followed the Watergate investigation against President Nixon while they were at Yale, but that didn’t really prepare them for the Whitewater fiasco.
Later, Kenneth Starr was appointed as Independent Counsel to investigate the Whitewater charges, plus other questionable accusations that had been aimed at the President. But leaks from Starr’s office concerning some grand jury statements didn’t help either him or the Clintons. At one point, Starr considered resignation from his position, but anti-Clinton forces pressured him to stay on.
In Bill Clinton’s second term, his affair with Monica Lewinsky brought about impeachment action by Congress. When the truth came out, Bill asked Hillary many times for her forgiveness, but they were not close for many months. Finally, after the impeachment charges failed to pass in the Senate, Hillary recalled what Nelson Mandela had said about mastering his own anger and forgiving his jailors while he was imprisoned. She also followed Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice years before when she was First Lady: "... develop skin as tough as rhinoceros hide."
Hillary traveled and lectured in different parts of the world probably more than any other First Lady had. She and daughter Chelsea also accompanied President Clinton on summit conferences. These trips and Hillary’s challenging eight years at the White House helped prepare her for her New York senatorial campaign in 2000, which she won.
Besides Living History, which was published in 2003, Hillary Rodham Clinton has written several other books, the most popular being It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us.